Paul Klee Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works | The Art Story Web Services & Hosting by The Computer Studio | Designed by DesArtLab Expressionism Expressionism Expressionism is a broad term for a host of movements in early twentieth-century Germany and beyond, from Die Brücke (1905) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911) to the early Neue Sachlichkeit painters in the 1920s and '30s. Many Expressionists used vivid colors and abstracted forms to create spiritually or psychologically intense works, while others focused on depictions of war, alienation, and the modern city. Bauhaus Bauhaus Bauhaus is a style associated with the Bauhaus school, an extremely influential art and design school in Weimar Germany that emphasized functionality and efficiency of design. Its famous faculty - including Joseph Albers and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - generally rejected distinctions between the fine and applied arts, and encouraged major advances in industrial design. Abstract Expressionism Abstract Expressionism A tendency among New York painters of the late 1940s and '50s, all of whom were committed to an expressive art of profound emotion and universal themes.

The movement embraced the gestural abstraction of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, and the color field painting of Mark Rothko and others. It blended elements of Surrealism and abstract art in an effort to create a new style fitted to the postwar mood of anxiety and trauma. Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach is among the most celebrated and proficient classical composers and musicians in all of history. Coming of age in the early eighteenth century, Bach is credited as the finest composer of the German Baroque period, and was himself a master organist, harpsichordist, and violinist. Among his most celebrated compositions are St. John Passion, The Well-Tempered Clavier, and Cello Suites, to name just a few. Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Kandinsky A member of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, and later a teacher at the Bauhaus, Kandinsky is best known for his pioneering breakthrough into expressive abstraction in 1913. His work prefigures that of the American Abstract Expressionists. Franz Marc Franz Marc Franz Marc was a German painter and printmaker, and one of the pioneers of German Expressionism.

Along with August Macke and Kandinksy, Marc founded The Blue Rider artist group. A student of Futurism and Cubism, Marc was a master of color and depth, and a major influence on mid-twentieth-century abstractionists. August Macke August Macke August Macke was a German painter and a leader in the Expressionist group The Blue Rider. A close friend of Franz Marc, Paul Klee and Robert Delaunay, Macke's paintings were more Post-Impressionist and Fauvist in style, but were very expressive in terms of color and mood. Macke was killed on the front lines during World War I, at the age of 27. Robert Delaunay Robert Delaunay Robert Delaunay was a French avant-garde painter. Early in his career he was associated with the Expressionist group The Blue Rider along with Kandinsky and Klee. Delaunay's singular style is referred to as Orphism; an approach that combines visual elements of Cubism, Expressionism and figurative abstraction.

Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso Picasso dominated European painting in the first half of the last century, and remains perhaps the century's most important, prolifically inventive, and versatile artist. Alongside Georges Braque, he pioneered Cubism. He also made significant contributions to Surrealist painting and media such as collage, welded sculpture, and ceramics. Georges Braque Georges Braque Georges Braque was a modern French painter who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed analytic Cubism and Cubist collage in the early twentieth century. Louis Moilliet Louis Moilliet Louis Moilliet was a Swiss painter, printer and stained-glass designer. Although he was closely associated with the German Expressionists, and was himself a member of Der Blaue Reiter, Moilliet's use of watercolors more resembled that of Orphism. A close friend of both Paul Klee and Auguste Macke, with whom he traveled throughout Tunisia in 1911 and 1914, Moilliet is also responsible for introducing Klee to Der Blaue Reiter. Wilhelm Worringer Wilhelm Worringer Wilhelm Worringer was a twentieth-century German art historian, most commonly associated with the German Expressionist movement.

In his most famous text, Abstraction and Empathy, Worringer justified the aesthetic properties of abstract and non-realist art, believing that such art was a new form of personal expression, hence the term "Expressionism," which Worringer coined. Surrealism Surrealism Perhaps the most influential avant-garde movement of the century, Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 by a small group of writers and artists who sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. Much influenced by Freud, they believed that the conscious mind repressed the power of the imagination. Influenced also by Marx, they hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in the everyday world and spur on revolution. Jean Dubuffet Jean Dubuffet Jean Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor, and arguably one of the most famous French artists of the mid-to-late-twentieth century. Dubuffet's paintings employed the impasto technique, in which oil paints were thickened by materials such as sand, tar and straw.

He coined the term "Art Brut," otherwise known as "raw art." Color Field Painting Color Field Painting A tendency within Abstract Expressionism, distinct from gestural abstraction, Color Field painting was developed by Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still in the late 1940s, and developed further by Helen Frankenthaler and others. It is characterized by large fields of color and an absence of any figurative motifs, and often expresses a yearning for transcendence and the infinite. Jules Olitski Jules Olitski Jules Olitski was a Russian-born American painter and key figure in the mid-century movements of Color Field painting and Post-painterly abstraction. Olitski is most famous for his innovation of painting using multiple spray guns, applied to unprimed and unstretched canvases. Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract painter in mid-twentieth-century New York. Along with Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, Frankenthaler is considered a pioneer in the practice of Color Field painting. Ellsworth Kelly Ellsworth Kelly Ellsworth Kelly is an American Color Field and Hard edge painter.

Kelly got his start in the late 1950s with showings at the Betty Parsons Gallery and the Whitney Museum. His work often consists of shaped canvases, simple geometric shapes, and large panels of uniform color. Josef Albers Josef Albers Josef Albers was a German-born American painter and teacher. Celebrated as a geometric abstractionist and influential instructor at Black Mountain College, Albers directly influenced such artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Ray Johnson. Herwarth Walden Herwarth Walden Herwarth Walden is the psuedonym of Georg Lewin, a German artist, musician, and gallery owner. He was an important supporter of the avant-garde art scene, and founded the Expressionist journal Der Sturm. Cubism Cubism Cubism was developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907-1911, and it continued to be highly influential long after its decline. This classic phase has two stages: 'Analytic', in which forms seem to be 'analyzed' and fragmented; and 'Synthetic', in which pre-existing materials such as newspaper and wood veneer are collaged to the surface of the canvas.

Max Ernst Max Ernst Max Ernst was a German Dadaist and Surrealist whose paintings and collages combine dream-like realism, automatic techniques, and eerie subject matter. William Baziotes William Baziotes Paul Klee | Swiss-German artist | Britannica.com Swiss-German artist Paul Klee, (born December 18, 1879, Münchenbuchsee, near Bern, Switzerland —died June 29, 1940, Muralto, near Locarno ), Swiss-German painter and draftsman who was one of the foremost artists of the 20th century. Paul Klee, 1939. Aufnahme Fotopress Early life and education Klee’s mother, née Ida Maria Frick of Basel , and his German-born father, Hans Klee, were both trained as musicians. By Swiss law, Paul Klee held his father’s nationality; late in life he applied for Swiss citizenship but died just days before it was granted. A gifted violinist, he briefly considered music as a career, and between 1903 and 1906 he played occasionally in the Bern symphony orchestra .

Klee was educated in the classical Literarschule (a literary secondary school) in Bern. As a youth, he wrote poetry and even tried his hand at writing plays . The diaries he kept from 1897 to 1918 are valuable documents rich with detailed accounts of his experiences and his observations on art and literature. As a boy, Klee did delicate landscape drawings, in which he and his parents saw the promise of a career, and he filled his school notebooks with comic sketches. Upon graduating from the Literarschule in 1898 he left for Munich , which was then the artistic capital of Germany, and enrolled in the private art school of Heinrich Knirr. In 1899 he was admitted to the Munich Academy, which was then under the direction of Franz von Stuck , the foremost painter of Munich. Stuck was a rather strict academic painter of allegorical pictures, but his emphasis on imagination proved invaluable to the young Klee. Klee completed his artistic education with a six-month visit to Italy before returning to Bern. The beauty of the art of ancient Rome and of the Renaissance led him to question the imitative styles of his teachers and of his own previous work.

Giving vent to his generally sardonic attitude toward people and institutions, Klee fell back on his undisputed talent for caricature , making it one of the cornerstones of his art. His first important works, a series of etchings , Inventions, undertaken in 1903–05 after his return from Italy and drawn in a tight technique inspired by Renaissance prints , are grotesque allegories of social pretension, artistic triumph and failure, and the nature and perils of woman. In 1906 Klee married Lily Stumpf, a pianist whom he had met while an art student, and that year he settled in Munich to pursue his career. His public debut that year—an exhibition of Inventions in Frankfurt am Main and Munich—was largely ignored. He tried to earn a living by writing reviews of art exhibits and concerts, teaching life-drawing classes, and providing illustrations for journals and books. He had one small success as an illustrator: the drawings he did in 1911–12 for Voltaire ’s satirical novel Candide .

Among his most-accomplished early works, these drawings attempt to capture the humour and universality of Voltaire’s satire by reducing characters, settings, and details to comic flurries of lines. As for Klee’s caricatures , they were rejected as too idiosyncratic , and for many years Klee’s small family—increased to three in 1907 by the birth of their only child, Felix—was supported largely by Lily’s piano lessons. Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent Over the next several years Klee began to address his relative ignorance of modern French art. In 1905 he visited Paris, where he took special note of the Impressionists , and between 1906 and 1909 he became successively acquainted with the work of the Post-Impressionists Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne and of the Belgian artist James Ensor . He also began to explore the expressive possibilities of children’s drawings. These varied influences imparted to his work a freedom of expression and a willfulness of style equaled by few other artists of the time. Art & Architecture: Fact or Fiction?

Klee caught up with the avant-garde in 1911, when he entered the circle of Der Blaue Reiter , an artists’ organization founded in Munich that year by the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky and the German painter Franz Marc . Kandinsky was then in the process of formulating his influential theory of abstract art as spiritual expression, and while Klee had only limited tolerance for his mysticism , the Russian artist, together with Marc, showed him how far abstraction and a visionary approach to content could be taken. Klee also came to know a wide variety of French Cubist painting from Der Blaue Reiter exhibitions of 1911–12 and from a visit he made to Paris in April 1912. He was especially impressed with the Orphic Cubism of the French artist Robert Delaunay . Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies Klee’s own adoption of the abstracted geometric style of the Cubists is seen in a number of drawings he did in 1912–13 that range from comic images of lust and mayhem to symbolic representations of fate.

They are not as complex as Cubist compositions—that would come later, after Klee had assimilated his new discovery—but instead resemble, and were largely inspired by, the simple patterns of children’s drawings. Klee joined Cubism to children’s art because both, he believed, returned art to its fundamentals: children’s art by its direct and naive renderings, and Cubism by its timeless geometry. Together with Klee’s taste for caricature , these elements result in a characteristic union of the farcical and the sublime , two seemingly contradictory qualities held in suspension by Klee’s rigorous compositions and later by the beauty of his colour. From Cubism Klee also derived the frequent use of letters and other signs in his works: in Cubism these are usually simple indicators of the objects represented, but with Klee they become objects in their own right, imbuing his scenes with portents and enigmatic significance. Artistic maturity Until 1914 Klee found it difficult to paint; he felt a lack of confidence in his abilities as a colourist, and most of his work to that time had been in black and white.

But in April of that year he took a two-week trip to Tunisia with his boyhood friend Louis Moilliet and fellow painter August Macke of Der Blaue Reiter. Klee’s intense response to the North African landscape and the example of Macke’s more-advanced use of Delaunay’s colourful Cubism brought him new assurance as a painter. His lyrical watercolours of Tunisia, in which the landscape is simplified into transparent coloured planes, are his first sustained body of work in colour. They would be the basis, in subject and style, for much of his painting in subsequent years. As a German citizen, Klee was called up for service in the German army in 1916 during World War I . As a Swiss, he felt little of the patriotic zeal and martial enthusiasm shown by many German artists and intellectuals , and he was spared front-line duty by recently enacted legislation exempting artists from combat. He remained in Bavaria , where he was able to continue his art. Many of the paintings Klee did during the war years are romantic childlike landscapes, where war makes its appearance indirectly in images of demons or conflicts with fate. Their charm proved popular with the public, and his work began to sell.

Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest With the end of the war in 1918, Klee, like many German artists, saw the hope of a new society. His political optimism may explain the exuberance of his work at this time. He continued to paint evocative landscapes, but he returned as well to the farcical imagery he had drawn before the war. He visited the Dadaists in Zürich , and his work approaches theirs in its humour and spirit of absurdity. Among Klee’s most-striking pictures of the postwar period are his oil transfer paintings, created with a distinctive technique he devised in 1919. Essentially coloured drawings, they were made by tracing a drawing—usually onto watercolour paper—through a transfer paper coated with sticky black ink or paint, and colouring the result. Their characteristically fuzzy, spreading lines are unlike anything else in the period and lend a rich patina to Klee’s droll or whimsical images.

Among them are such well-known works as Room Perspective with Inhabitants (1921), whose inhabitants dwell not in the room but within the perspective lines that create it; and Twittering Machine (1922), which depicts a comic apparatus for making birds sing. In 1920 Klee received an appointment to teach at the Bauhaus , the school of modern design founded in 1919 in Weimar , Germany, by the architect Walter Gropius . Klee’s principal duty, like that of his fellow Bauhaus artists Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy , was to lecture in the basic design program on the mechanics of art. His lectures at the Bauhaus, recorded in more than 3,300 pages of notes and drawings, were a remarkable attempt to show how the formal elements of art—simple linear constructions and geometric motifs—could be used to build complex symbolic compositions. Klee expounded his own methods in the Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch (1925; Pedagogical Sketchbook).

Trending Topics Eyjafjallajökull volcano The prevalent geometric aesthetic of the 1920s and Klee’s attempts to teach a methodology of art led him to rationalize his own practice as well. His work of the Bauhaus decade is more geometric than before, and the number of forms employed in a given composition is sharply reduced. Among the many types of compositions resulting from this practice are pictures made entirely of coloured squares, horizontal striations, or patterns resembling basket weave and, among his most evocative, a number of paintings in which puzzlingly disparate objects—faces, animals, goblets, heavenly bodies—coexist in a black undifferentiated space. By the mid-1920s Klee’s reputation had spread far beyond Germany, and in 1925 he received his first one-man show in Paris, the capital of European art. As the decade progressed, his biweekly lectures and administrative duties, and the almost constant tension in the Bauhaus over policy and politics, became increasingly onerous, and in 1931 he resigned for a less-demanding position at the Dusseldorf Academy.

He continued to work with geometric forms, most notably in his richly but painstakingly rendered pointillist paintings of 1930–32, with their mosaic-like surfaces of coloured dots—among them his largest single painting to date, Ad Parnassum (1932). But most of his pictures of the early and mid-1930s show varying attempts at loosening his style, with freer compositions and brushwork. Klee remained at the Dusseldorf Academy until 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power; from then on, it was no longer possible to work in Germany. As a modern artist, Klee was dismissed from his position, and his house and studio were searched by the Gestapo on account of his known left-wing sympathies. Despite these difficulties, Klee continued to produce his art without restraint. The drawings he did at this time are mostly representational and even narrative; many directly reflect the political disturbances of the day, dealing in ironic fashion with demagogy, militarism, political violence, and emigration. But Klee’s creative activity was not to continue uninterrupted.

At the end of 1933 he returned to the relative artistic isolation of Switzerland, where the disruptions caused by his move, along with his sudden financial uncertainty, took a toll on both the quality and quantity of his work. His difficulties were compounded in the summer of 1935 by the onset of an incurable illness. At first misdiagnosed as a variety of lesser ailments, it was eventually recognized as scleroderma , an affliction in which the body’s connective tissues become fibrous. Its severe initial symptoms, which ranged from a rash to glandular disturbances and respiratory and digestive difficulties, left Klee incapable of working for over a year. But in 1937 the temporary remission of his illness led to a remarkable outpouring of creative energy that was sustained until only a few months before his death in 1940. Klee’s late paintings and drawings are strongly influenced by the harsh distortions of Pablo Picasso ’s work of the 1920s and ’30s. What the Spanish master gave to Klee in these final years was a means of expressing the urgency Klee felt as his health declined.

The small details and delicate shadings and tints that had given his previous work its characteristic refinement are replaced by bold, simple strokes and a new intensity of colour. The sense of humour in these last works is now muted by the gravity of Klee’s style and above all by images of dying and death. Among such works are wry drawings of angels (1939–40), who are still half-attached by memories and desires to their former selves, and Death and Fire (1940), Klee’s evocation of the underworld, in which a rueful face of death is placed in an infernal setting of fiery red. These late images are among the most memorable of all Klee’s works and are some of the most significant depictions of death in the history of art. Assessment Though Klee belonged to no movement, he assimilated, and even anticipated, most of the major artistic tendencies of his time in his work. Using both representational and abstract approaches, he produced an immense oeuvre of some 9,000 paintings, drawings, and watercolours in a great variety of styles.

His works tend to be small in scale and are remarkable for their delicate nuances of line, colour, and tonality. In Klee’s highly sophisticated art, irony and a sense of the absurd are joined to an intense evocation of the mystery and beauty of nature. Claiming art to be a parable of the Creation, Klee represented everything from human figures and foibles to landscapes and microcosms of the plant and animal kingdoms, all with an eye that mocked as much as it praised; he was one of the great humorists of 20th-century art and its supreme ironist. Music figures prominently in his work—in his many images of opera and musicians, and to some extent as a model for his compositions. But literature had the greater pull on him; his art is steeped in poetic and mythic allusion , and the titles he gave to his pictures tend to charge them with additional meanings. Klee’s work was too personal to found a school or style, but it has had wide and profound influence.

Paul Klee Biography (Artist) Birthplace: Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland Best known as: Post-impressionist Swiss painter of The Twittering Machine Paul Klee was a Swiss-German artist known for the fine lines and playful geometry in his childlike watercolors and illustrations. His mother was Swiss and his father was German, and Klee was raised in Switzerland but spent most of his adult life in Germany, where he studied art at the end of the nineteenth century. A skilled illustrator and respected teacher at the Bauhaus, Klee was part of Der Blaue Reiter, the avant-garde circle co-founded by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky . Influenced by Cubism and drawn to the expressiveness of primitive art and children's paintings, Klee produced nearly 10,000 works in a variety of media, but is mostly known for his watercolor paintings. At the peak of his career his work was deemed "degenerate" by the Nazi party of Adolf Hitler and removed from all public exhibits. He left Germany and returned to Switzerland in 1933, but by 1935 was ill with what has since been diagnosed as scleroderma, a rare condition that hardens the skin.

Despite his ill health, Klee remained creative and prolific until his untimely death in 1940. Some of his best-known works include Southern (Tunisian) Gardens (1919), The Twittering Machine (1922) and Fish Magic (1925). Extra credit: Because of his father’s nationality, Klee was considered German, despite having been born and raised in Switzerland. Despite his attempts to become a Swiss citizen, he was not granted citizenship until shortly after his death… Klee was an accomplished musician who played violin for a time with the Bern symphony orchestra… While an art professor, Klee wrote the influential textbook Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch ( Pedagogical Sketchbook). Copyright © 1998-2017 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved. Paul Klee - 203 paintings, drawings and prints - WikiArt.org Wikipedia: Paul Klee’s was a Swiss born painter, with a unique style that was influenced by expressionism, cubism, surrealism, and orientalism.

His written collections of lectures, Writings on Form and Design Theory are considered as important to modern art as Leonardo da Vinci’s written works were to the Renaissance. As a child, Klee was mainly oriented as a musician, having played the violin since he was eight, but in his teen years, he found that art allowed him freedom to explore his style and express his radical ideas. Although Klee is now considered a master of color theory, he spent a long time in his search for his sense of color. At first, Klee drew in black and white, saying he would never be a painter. But as an adult, after a visit to Tunisia, in which he was impressed by the quality of light, he had found his sense of color and began experimenting with his newfound decision to be a painter. Klee spent much of his adult life teaching at various universities and art schools, including the German Bauhaus School of Art and Düsseldorf Academy. During his tenure at Düsseldorf, he was singled out as a Jew by the Nazi party. The Gestapo searched his home and he was fired from his job. Some of his later works were also seized by the Nazis. Although the artist was born in Switzerland, he was not born a Swiss citizen.

His father was a German national, and citizenship being decided on paternity, Klee was born a German citizen. His request for Swiss citizenship was not granted until six days after his untimely death from undiagnosed scleroderma. Klee’s legacy includes over 9,000 works of art, which have inspired many other painting and musical compositions. In 1938 he was immortalized by Steinway Pianos in their “Paul Klee Series” pianos. Paul Klee: a question of nationality | La Suisse au Miroir du Monde Paul Klee: a question of nationality by Thomas Kadelbach Thomas Kadelbach, né en 1979. Après des études d'histoire et littérature française à Angers, Fribourg et Madrid, il collabore au projet de recherche FNS Les relations culturelles internationales de la Suisse, 1945-1990 . Thèse de doctorat sur Pro Helvetia et l'image de la Suisse à l'étranger. Actuellement collaborateur scientifique à l'Université de Neuchâtel.

, Thomas Kadelbach, born in 1979. Studied history and French literature in Angers, Fribourg and Madrid. Research assistant in the SNSF research project Switzerland's International Cultural Relations, 1945-1990 . PhD thesis on Pro Helvetia and the image of Switzerland abroad. Currently scientific collaborator at the University of Neuchâtel. contemporary art painting Australia 1974 was an outstanding year for the cultural impact of Switzerland in Australia. The Collegium Musicum, founded in Zurich by conductor Paul Sacher in 1941, went on a concert tour, which attracted considerable attention and enjoyed extraordinary success in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, and Adelaide. In the same year, the Australian public discovered the work of a painter, today considered the icon of 20th century Swiss painting: Paul Klee. In collaboration with the Australian Arts Council, Pro Helvetia organised exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide that attracted large crowds. Although Klee became one of the leading ambassadors for the artistic creation in Switzerland in the 20th century, he did not always receive a warm welcome in his adoptive homeland.

During the 1930s and 1940s, at the time of the Spiritual defence, his abstract works were rejected by the public and provoked sarcastic comments in the press. In 1940, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung associated them with schizophrenia. After a meticulous investigation in 1939, Klee’s application for naturalisation was rejected by police headquarters in Bern. He was considered a possible welfare case. Initially also Pro Helvetia found it difficult to accept the artist, born in Münchenbuchsee, but citizen of Germany, as a representative of “Swiss art.” He died in 1940 in Locarno, Ticino, without ever having obtained Swiss nationality. In the eyes of those responsible for cultural policy in Pro Helvetia, Klee’s “Swissness” was no less in doubt than that of Russia-born, but naturalised composer Wladimir Vogel. The Federal Authorities adopted a similar position. In 1948, at the request of the Political Department, the Swiss Consulate in Los Angeles went so far as to intervene with The Los Angeles Times , who had described Klee as a Swiss painter.

Abroad, however, this position met with little sympathy. During an exhibition of Swiss contemporary art in Stockholm, the Swedish press poured scorn on it: We are looking for a name, the greatest name in Swiss modern art: Paul Klee. How could he have been overlooked, while a number of irrelevant artists were deemed worthy to represent their country? It is pathetic. And it is useless. After that, Klee’s international prestige prevailed over any reference to his origins. First of all, it was Pro Helvetia’s foreign press news service, which discovered Klee’s potential for successful cultural propaganda. Klee’s return to Switzerland was used to illustrate Swiss hospitality during times of political intolerance in an article, published in 1955: In 1933, when the darkness of the Nazi era descended on Germany and there was no room for free spirits like Klee, he once again turned to Switzerland [...] He was confident to find a spiritual climate he had been familiar with since youth. This certainty and a growing public awareness concerning political matters contributed to giving him a sense of security.

Finally, in 1956, Klee’s paintings were included in an exhibition Pro Helvetia showed in Madrid and Barcelona, at the invitation of the Spanish Ministry for Education, which had explicitly asked for the consideration of paintings by the artist they regarded as Swiss. At last, in the winter of 1956, Klee started his posthumous career as an ambassador of Swiss culture, which would twenty years on take his work as far as Australia. (tk) Archives Is Paul Klee a Swiss painter? Pro Helvetia justifies Paul Klee’s contribution to the exhibition in Spain: Inspite of our objections because of Klee’s nationality, Madrid insisted on his participation alongside the 25 painters who had been selected for the event. [...] Our foundation decided to at least partly comply with the request. Although it would have been easy to use Paul Klee as the figurehead of the exhibition, we limited the choice of exhibits to 5 watercolours, whereas his Swiss colleagues are represented with oil paintings. His nationality is mentioned in the catalogue but he has been altogether omitted from the preface to avoid any confusion on the part of the Spanish public.

Gazette de Lausanne , 22./23.12.1956 From Hodler to Klee In 1960, an exhibition of contemporary art in Switzerland mentions Klee for the first time in its title. Swiss National Library Paul Klee - Wikiquote Paul Klee Jump to: navigation , search The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions. Paul Klee ( December 18 1879 – June 29 1940 ) was a Swiss painter of German nationality. He was influenced by many different art styles in his work, including expressionism , cubism and surrealism , and had influence on Kandinsky when they were both teaching at the Bauhaus . Contents 3 External links Quotes of Paul Klee[ edit ] The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract; while a world at peace produces realistic art. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday.

There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental. When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed. To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers. Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail. It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions. We construct and keep on constructing, yet intuition is still a good thing. 1900s[ edit ] "Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries"[ edit ] "Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries", ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London But by way of consolation: it is valueless to paint premature things, what counts is to be a personality, or at least to become one. The domination of life is one of the basic conditions of productive expression.

For me this is surely the case; when I am depressed I am unable even to think about it – and this holds true for painting, sculpture, tragedy, or music. But I believe that pictures alone will abundantly fill out this one life. (Bern, April 1902) p. 442 I have a feeling that sooner or later I shall arrive at something legitimate, only I must begin, not with hypotheses, but with specific instances, no matter how minute. If I then succeed in distinguishing a clear structure, I get more from it than from a lofty imaginary construction. And the typical will automatically follow from a series of examples. (Bern, April 1902) p. 442 It is a great difficulty and great necessity to have to start with the smallest. I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing, about Europe; ignoring poets and fashions, to be almost primitive. Then I want to do something very modest; to work out by myself a tiny, formal motive, one that my pencil; will be able to hold without any technique. One favorable moment is enough. The little thing is easily and concisely set down. It’s already done!

It was a tiny but real affair, and someday, through the repetition of such small but original deeds, there will come one work upon which I can really build. (June 1902) p. 442 The naked body is an altogether suitable object. In art classes I have gradually learned something of it from every angle. But now I will no more project some plan of it: I will proceed so that all its essentials, even those hidden by optical perspective, will appear upon the paper. And thus a little uncontested personal property has already been discovered, a style has been created. (June 1902) p. 443 Formerly it frequently happened to me that when questioned regarding a picture I simply did not know what it represented. I had not seen the subject, so to say. Now I have also included the content so that I know most of the time what is represented. But this only supports my experience that what matters in the ultimate end is the abstract meaning of harmonization (note from a letter, 1903) p. 443 When in Italy [Klee stayed in Italy, in 1901], I learned to understand architectural monuments..

.Even the dullest will understand that the obvious commensurability of parts, to each other and to the whole, corresponds to the hidden numerical proportions that exist in other artificial and natural organisms. It is clear that these figures are not cold and dead, but full of the breath of life; and the importance of measurements as an aid to study and creation becomes evident. (December 1903) p. 443 The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918[ edit ] The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968, ISBN 0-520-00653-4 My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones. Diary entry (Munich, 1901), # 136, (p. 48) The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual.

The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions. Diary entry (3 June 1902), # 411 When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed. Diary entry (December 1904), # 583 The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it. Diary entry (December 1905), # 733 To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers. Diary entry (March 1906), # 759, The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise, i.e., cannot do something else.

Diary entry (Munich, 1908), # 825, The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (p. 227) Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail. Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn. Diary entry (Munich, 1909), # 857, The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (p. 236) All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher! Diary entry (Spring 1911), # 895 1910s[ edit ] These are primitive beginnings in art, such as one usually finds in ethnographic collections or at home in one's nursery. Do not laugh, reader! Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in their having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved from corruption at an early age.

Parallel phenomena are provided by the works of the mentally diseased; neither childish behaviour nor madness are insulting words here, as they commonly are. All this is to be taken very seriously, more seriously than all the public galleries, when it comes to reforming today's art. Diary entry (January 1912), # 905, quoting his "Munich Art Letter" in the journal Die Alpen Colour possesses me. It will always possess me. That is the meaning of this happy hour: colour and I are one. I am a painter. Diary entry Tunisia, (16 April 1914), # 926o The evening is deep inside me forever. Many a blond, northern moonrise, like a muted reflection, will softly remind me and remind me again and again. It will be my bride, my alter ego. An incentive to find myself. I myself am the moonrise of the south. 1920s[ edit ] Diesseitig bin ich gar nicht fassbar. Denn ich wohne grad so gut bei den Toten, wie bei den Ungeborenen. Etwas näher dem Herzen der Schöpfung als üblich.

Und noch lange nicht nahe genug. I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For I reside just as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough. Exhibition catalogue, Galerie Goltz, Munich, published in the gallery's house journal Der Ararat (May 1920). These words were later used as Klee's epitaph. Variant translation: I cannot be understood at all on this earth. For I live as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough. As quoted in Paul Klee : His Work and Thought (1991) by Marcel Franciscono, p. 5 Color is primarily Quality. Secondly, it is also Weight, for it has not only color value but also brilliance. Thirdly, it is Measure, for besides Quality and Weight, it has its limits, its area, and its extent, all of which may be measured. Tone value is primarily Weight, but in its extent and its boundaries, it is also Measure. Line, however, is solely Measure.

"On Modern Art," lecture, Kunstverein, Jena (26 January 1924), trans. Paul Findlay in Paul Klee: On Modern Art (London, 1948) It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions. Statement of mid-1920s, as quoted in Abstract Art (1990) by Anna Moszynska, p. 100 It is possible that a picture will move far away from Nature and yet find its way back to reality. The faculty of memory, experience at a distance produces pictorial associations. Statement of mid-1920s, as quoted in Abstract Art (1990) by Anna Moszynska, p. 100 The longer a line, the more of the time element it contains. Distance is time whereas a surface is apprehended more in terms of the moment. Exact Experiments in the Realm of Art (1927) We [at the Bauhaus, in Dessau - where Klee was art teacher with Kandinsky ] construct and construct, and yet intuition still has its uses. Without it we can do a lot, but not everything..

.When intuition is joined to exact research it speeds the progress of exact research.. In: 'Bauhaus prospectus 1929'; as quoted in "Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries", ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 444 What had already been done for music by the end of the eighteenth century has at last been begun for the pictorial arts. Mathematics and physics furnished the means in the form of rules to be followed and to be broken. In the beginning it is wholesome to be concerned with the functions and to disregard the finished form. Studies in algebra, in geometry, in mechanics characterize teaching directed towards the essential and the functional, in contrast to apparent. One learns to look behind the façade, to grasp the root of things. One learns to recognize the undercurrents, the antecedents of the visible. One learns to dig down, to uncover, to find the cause, to analyze. In: 'Bauhaus prospectus 1929'; as quoted in "Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries", ed.

by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 444 Creative Credo (1920)[ edit ] Creative Credo [Schöpferische Konfession] (1920) Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar. Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. Section I A tendency toward the abstract is inherent in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairy-like quality and at the same time can achieve great precision. Section I The pictorial work was born of movement, is itself recorded movement, and is assimilated through movement (eye muscles). Section IV Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental.

Section V Attributed from posthumous publications[ edit ] Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view. As quoted in the film Der Bauhaus, produced by TV-Rechte in Germany (1975) Quotes about Paul Klee[ edit ] A Klee painting named ‘ Angelus Novus ’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead , and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise ; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward . This storm is what we call progress.

Paul Klee Paul Klee Location of death: Muralto, Switzerland Cause of death: unspecified Remains: Buried, Schosshalde Friedhof, Bern, Switzerland Gender: Male Executive summary: German-Swiss abstract painter Military service: German Army (1916-18) Father: Hans Klee (musician) Mother: Ida Maria Frick (musician) Wife: Lily Stumpf (pianist, m. 1906) Son: Felix (b. 1907) High School: Literarschule, Bern, Switzerland (1898) University: Munich Academy of Art (1899-) Professor: Dusseldorf Academy (1931-33) Is the subject of books: Paul Klee: His Work and Thought, 1991, BY: Marcel Franciscono Author of books:

Question: What nationality was the painter Paul Klee?
Answer: SWISS